Publication Type

Working Paper

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

8-2020

Abstract

Using an unsupervised machine learning approach to analyze 12.8 million tweets posted by S&P 1500 firms from 2012 to 2016, we find that firms tweet more financial information around significantly negative or positive earnings announcements or accounting filings. Specifically, we observe a symmetric U-shaped relation between the number of financial tweets and the materiality of accounting information events. This relation is consistent with the theoretical prediction in Hummel et al. (2018) which assumes that managers are sensitive to their firm’s fundamental value. We document that this relation also holds for hyperlink usage in tweets about financial information around important events, and that the relation is more pronounced for non-loss firms. Furthermore, our intraday analyses indicate that firms release financial information on Twitter primarily after (before) earnings announcements (10-K or 10-Q filings), suggesting that Twitter plays different roles for firms around separate accounting information events.

Keywords

Social Media, Discretionary Dissemination, Disclosures, Twitter, Feedback

Discipline

Accounting | Corporate Finance | Social Media

Research Areas

Corporate Reporting and Disclosure

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Comments

2018 Jan -- University of California Riverside, Workshop – Hai Lu 2018 Jan -- Hawai'i Accounting Research Conference – Hai Lu 2018 Dec -- Boston College, Workshop – Hai Lu 2017 Oct -- University of Toronto, Workshop 2017 Sept Washington University St. Louis, Workshop – Hai Lu 2017 Aug -- Carnegie Mellon Accounting Conference – Hai Lu 2017 Jun CUHK Conference on Text Analysis – Hai Lu May 2017 -- Hong Kong PolyU internal conference – Wenli Huang Apr 2017 -- SMU-NTU-NUS Accounting Research Joint Conference

Additional URL

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3105847

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